Large variance of potential terror targets in National Asset Data Base
Posted: 07/13/2006 04:18 pm Last Updated: 07/13/2006 04:33 pm
If your idea of terror targets in the U.S. includes nuclear plants and national monuments, you're apparently not thinking broadly enough.
It turns out the Department of Homeland Security has a list of 77,000 places, from petting zoos to donut shops, that are potential targets.
Potential terrorist targets?
At Amish Country Popcorn, south of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, owner Brian Lehman says there isn't a kernel of truth to the notion that his operation is a potential terror target.
"Our cornfields are pretty well protected," he says.
But it pops up in a report on the Department of Homeland Security's National Asset Data Base, listed just after Tennessee's Mule Day Parade
Also in the database, another Tennessee attraction: the Sweetwater Flea Market.
In Pennsylvania, the Groundhog Zoo.
In Georgia, the Kangaroo Conservation Center.
More than 77,000 listings. So much, the Inspector General says, that it's "of questionable relevance in setting security priorities."
One New York Senator mocked the list for including a petting zoo.
Senator Charles Schumer, (D), of New York, says, "Now, I've been to petting zoos when I was a kid. And I took my children to petting zoos. But I never saw a terrorist hiding behind one of the sheep in Little Bo Peep's flock."
Many of the places were listed by cities and states as important assets.
But nationwide, they varied widely in what they considered valuable. Some listed all their schools. Some listed none.
Nebraska reported 200 more assets than the entire state of California.
Homeland Security says the list is intended only as a catalog of places such as arenas, commercial sites, and government facilities, but was not used on its own to give out grant money or set security priorities:
Bob Stephan of the Homeland Security Department says, "It's like a reference, an encyclopedia, a telephone book. Eighty-thousand individual data points inside the data base, not necessarily critical in and of themselves."
Indiana targets
A federal database identifies almost 9,000 places or events in Indiana that might need to be protected from potential terror attacks.
That means Indiana has one out of every nine at-risk sites or events in the entire nation.